In a bid to engage youths of the Amuwo-Odofin community, the Street Soccer King debut edition was held in the Festac Town axis of Amuwo-Odofin LGA.
The event was organised by Dibia Simon Peter and Bakare Ismalai, who are youths in the community.
According to the duo, the project was organised to engage the youths of the community and to psychologically arrest their idle minds. It was put into play, basically to direct, manage, support, develop, and promote talented individuals through footballing aids.
The event held which was a week long competition, kicked off on the 11th March 2024 and ended on the 22nd March 2024 at the 512 Soccer field. A total of 16 participants took part in the tournament and winners emerged who all went home with cash gifts.
Speaking to Mr Dibia, He Said
This competition was brought about to combat the use and abuse of hard drugs which has eaten deep into the lives of many youths at large especially in our community here in Amuwo.
Nigeria’s street soccer culture has been a breeding ground for remarkable talents, with players emerging from the Informal settings to make a significant impact on the global football stage.
And you will agree with me if I say football is the most popular sport in Nigeria, if only there was another word to describe the popularity of football in my country. Football in other words gave birth to street soccer and street soccer has been helpful a lot among the youths, all across Nigeria kids play football anywhere they can find space on the street, sometimes on risky tarred roads, where they could easily hurt their feet or crash into a moving vehicle.
Usually, they stop the game, remove their goal-post, to allow the vehicle or an elderly person passthrough; then they resume playing again that’s basically the fun and entertaining parts of the games and mostly the skills showcased during the match. Left to the world street soccer is just a game of fun and entertainment which is generally the basics of the game.
But, unknown to many, street soccer has helped a lot by arresting the idle and evil mindset of the youths which prompted the organisers of this particular Festac Street Soccer King to quickly seize the opportunity to come up with an ideology of bringing together many young heads from different community.
The final aim of this initiative of the project, we could never tell, is to have these players some sort of platform to be approached by potential agents or scouts which could as a result boost the career of such players and encourage their peers to be more serious with their given talents.